Empire: A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon [Paperback]

Mitchell Pacelle (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 3, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0471238651 | ISBN-13: 978-0471238652

The world's most famous skyscraper, the Empire State Building is an icon as immediately recognizable as the Eiffel Tower, the Great Pyramids, or the Taj Mahal; and for some of the world's most powerful men, it is the ultimate prize. From the day it was erected, it has been the object of obsession for the heads of empires, conjuring their most hidden vices. In a riveting chronicle of betrayal, revenge, family rivalry, and raw greed, award-winning journalist Mitchell Pacelle tells the compelling tale of the history of the Empire State Building and the battle for ownership which reveals the inner workings of a world of powerful, self-made men. Pacelle brings to life the colorful cast of characters involved-a dramatis personae including the most powerful players in the international real estate markets both old and new, including John Raskob and Pierre du Pont alongside Donald Trump, the Helmsleys, Peter Malkin, and the eccentric Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi. Before the tale is over, Yokoi will accuse his beloved illegitimate daughter of stealing the building from him, several participants will land in jail, one will die suddenly, and a tense legal standoff will leave the landmark in limbo. One of the most fascinating characters to emerge from this richly layered story is the building itself, with its legendary romances and suicides, its odd tenants, and the countless human triumphs and tragedies that have been played out within its towering walls.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Each day over 4,000 people take the elevator up to the observatory of the Empire State Building to catch a minute of glory. What almost none of them have known--until now--is just how many people have fought to own outright the crown jewel beneath them, and the chaos that these trophy hunters have caused. "Over the years," writes Wall Street Journal reporter Mitchell Pacelle, "the Empire State Building had exerted an almost magnetic pull over a certain kind of man, the kind who once had nothing and now had everything." The construction of the Empire State Building was a $50 million roll of the dice by a failed political candidate, who took on the impossible task of filling 80 floors with paying tenants in the midst of the Depression just to win the race for skyline supremacy. Thirty years later, the Prudential Company gutted the building's profit potential by leasing it to real estate magnates Larry Wien and Harry Helmsley for 114 years. Their heirs, Peter Milkin and Leona Helmsley, would end up locked in a bitter embrace. Then, in 1991, Prudential decided to sell the tower, and the building entered its most bizarre period as a group of eccentric billionaires fought to control it.

Pacelle masterfully tells the story of Hideki Yokoi, a Japanese businessman with a shady past who became obsessed with the American icon during an $80 million shopping spree. Rebuffed in his pursuit by Prudential, he finally landed the building with the help of his illegitimate daughter, a front man, shell companies, and a fair number of lies--but not for long. Convinced that his daughter had stolen the building from him, he initiated a bizarre family feud that landed two people in jail. Add Donald Trump to the mix (and a plan to upscale the building with luxury condos, classy restaurants, and a hotel) and an epic legal war began between Trump and his nemesis Leona Helmsley, holder of the precious lease. Full of mind-boggling twists and betrayals, Pacelle's book is a priceless cautionary tale about ego, greed, and vengeance, and the inevitable bust that follows every bubble. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

If you thought King Kong was the only monster who has laid claim to the Empire State Building, guess again. This highly entertaining, well-researched volume about the all-out, high-stakes battle in the 1980s and '90s over ownership and control of one of Manhattan's premier edifices is a cross between great business writing and even greater gossip. Built in 1929, the Empire State Building was bought in 1961 by Henry Helmsley and Lawrence Wein, who quickly resold it but retained a 114-year lease. When the Helmsley empire began to crack in the late 1980s (wife Leona went to jail for tax fraud), the building was nearly bought by jailed Japanese investor Hideki Yokoi, who used his illegitimate daughter, Kiiko Nakahara, and her husband, Jean-Paul Renoir, as fronts. When that deal fell through, Nakahara and Renoir secretly bought the building themselves, entering a deal with Donald Trump to try to shake the Helmsley lease. After Nakahara and Renoir were jailed in France in 1996 for the alleged theft of real estate, Trump and Leona Helmsley entered into a gigantic legal and public relations battle for control of the building. Pacelle, who writes for the Wall Street Journal, is scrupulous in detailing the legal angles and how shifts in world economy and U.S. business both affected and were affected by all this skullduggery. He also has great fun with the bizarre cast of characters, who plot and connive against one another in what reads like a cross between film noir and a Harold Robbins novel. In the end, though, the Empire State Building remains a beauty, not destroyed by these beasts. (Nov.)Forecast: Expect solid sales in the Empire State and among real estate mavens, boosted by an excerpt in the Wall St. Journal.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 350 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (September 3, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471238651
• ISBN-13: 978-0471238652
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #905,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Buildings Replace Paintings November 20, 2001

By taking a rest HALL OF FAME

Format:Hardcover

When Japan was enjoying the height of its economy members of their super rich went on buying sprees that will remain legendary for both their scope and their questionable judgment. For a time landmarks and trophy properties were being purchased by Japanese investors from the beaches of Hawaii to downtown Manhattan. There was a certain unease expressed by some in this country that too much was being sold to a handful of foreign investors. For those who followed most of these acquisitions the only aspect that was more spectacular than the absurd prices that were paid, was the speed with which the buildings were either abandoned in bankruptcy procedures, or sold back to American owners for a fraction of what had been paid a few short years earlier.

Rockefeller Center was a 1.4 billion dollar loss to creditors; Pebble Beach Golf Course was taken back by banks and resold for approximately 50 cents on the dollar. Beachfront hotels in Hawaii fell into disrepair as the economy in Japan crumbled when their stock market fell some 44 percent almost overnight, and has still come nowhere near to recovering. The other willingness to spend without any regard for value was on art, primarily that of the great impressionists. The market both simultaneously hit its high and began dying in the three days one Tokyo businessman paid almost 80 million for a Van Gough, and then set the all time record for a painting a day later when buying a Renoir for 82.5 million. Both paintings were repossessed by the auction houses that sold them for non-payment, so whether they truly set records is open to debate. Even the third highest amount paid for a painting, some 50+ million, again a Van Gough, which was bought by an Australian, was again repossessed for failure to pay, and eventually sold to The Getty Museum in California for a number rumored to be half what it brought at auction.

Until I read, "Empire", by Mitchell Pacelle I thought that the "enthusiasm" that drove these purchases had ended, not unlike the dot.com hysteria our markets created and then destroyed. However Mr. Yokoi was to carry through the 1990's the same financially unjustifiable buying that his countrymen had been destroyed by earlier. In the process he and two other family members spent time in jail, and ultimately his unusual family was left in the same devastated state as the financial assets he once held.

Placing a value on the baseball that was the 70th homerun ball is purely subjective. The same case can be made for art; a given piece is worth what a given individual will pay on a given day. Real estate, especially commercial real estate has very defined methodologies for determining value, for determining the return a buyer or buyers are willing to accept. Oversimplified, an entity that is buying a piece of real estate is buying the income that it is producing, and what it is reasonably expected to produce in a definable future. When an investor makes a purchase the return expected and the risk taken are key elements in any rational decision.

The focus of the book includes residential homes that were bought as well as The Empire State Building. Residential real estate is again defined primarily by what a willing and capable buyer will spend, and in the case of the buying this man did based only on pictures of homes that resided in countries he had never visited, suffice to say the deals were all questionable and many were marked by no thought at all.

The New York Landmark clearly was a textbook example of emotional behavior. The building itself and the land it sits on is own by one group of people. The right to "occupy" the entire building is owned by two people until the year 2076. The rent they pay the owners of the building would give Mr. Yokoi about a 2.5 percent return on his money, or about the same as a checking account. Had he bought Treasury Bills of The US, he could have made double that return with zero risk. The real mind bender comes when one reads that those who hold the lease until 2076, NEVER have an increase in the rent they must pay; it actually goes down for a significant portion of the lease! Take into account inflation or net present value of the value of money in decades to come, and the only real income is the psychic value an owner feels from owning the property. One of the two holders of that lease is none other than Leona Helmsley, a woman not known for her diplomacy and for playing well with others. The quotes attributed to her in this book would make a longshoreman blush.

None of the family members/friends that made these deals were competent to do so. I have or hold several real estate licenses, and not one of these people could have passed the state exam for New York, however they were negotiating on their own for The Empire State Building! As I mentioned, the destruction of this family is a major part of the tale. The travails include the Patriarch Mr. Yokoi spending almost 3 years in a Japanese Jail, his daughter spending a similar time either in a French Prison or confined to France, and her husband spent over 3 years in a US Prison. All of these incarcerations occurred while the battle for control of this building was taking place.

If my comments sound like a stretch, they are mild in comparison to what all of the details of this folly entailed. As you read this book, at some point you will be reminded of P.T. Barnum and his famous take on people, "there is one born every minute".

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Truth is Stranger than Fiction December 27, 2001

By John D. Bartone

Format:Hardcover

Similar to the way the untimely deaths of Elvis and Marilyn helped elevate their status from celebrity to icon, the World Trade Center in the aftermath of the terrorist attack of September 11 seems well on its way to attaining an iconographic stature it never had while it stood. Take a walk through mid-town this holiday season and survey the street-vendors' wares. Twin Tower memorabilia predominates in a way it hasn`t in the past, most notably in souvenir photographs of New York's skyline. Yet those towers, the tallest of the Manhattan skyline (and briefly the tallest in the world), never defined the skyline in the hearts and minds of New Yorkers (or the worldwide community) in the way the Empire State Building has over the past seventy years. The warmth of the Empire State Building's limestone facade, the grace of its tapered silhouette, the romance of its history (both real and imagined) combine to create an allure that the boxy glass and steel towers could not match.

That history is presented in "Empire, A Tale of Obsession, Betrayal, and the Battle for an American Icon," Mitchell Pacelle's biography of the world's most famous skyscraper, and the book skillfully delivers all that its long title promises. The framework is the decade-long battle waged in the Nineties for ownership and control of the building, but there are ample asides that chronicle its entire history. The cast of players include unscrupulous Japanese billionaire Hideki Yokoi, double-crossed by his daughter and son-in-law, Kiiko Nakahara and Jean-Paul Renoir, who claimed Yokoi gave Nakahara the building as a gift; real estate magnate Harry Helmsley and his partner Lawrence Wein and their heirs, Peter Malkin and the reviled Leona Helmsley, who hold a 114 year lease on the property; and Donald Trump, determined to break that lease.

This is a big story about a big building, a big family, big fortunes, big egos and big deals. There are occasions when the details of the deals become confusing (like a set of nesting Russian dolls there are holding companies within holding companies within still more holding companies), but by and large the book is a page turner. "Empire" reads like fiction, except that if it were fiction you'd probably never believe it. The Leona parts are a particularly sinful pleasure, but read it without guilt. This is a well-researched and documented account by a respected reporter of The Wall Street Journal.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I kept waiting for Moe... October 30, 2001

By M. H. Huggins

Format:Hardcover

Man, I loved this craaazy book. New Yorkers, I take my dusty Bubba Gump Seafood hat off to ya'll. EMPIRE was the greatest mix of ego,pathos, and unbridled greed I ever read. If the book had gone to an editor as fiction A lot of changes would have been suggested because the truth is stranger than fiction. I kept waiting for The Three Stooges to show up boinking heads and poking eyes as bumbling real estate salesmen. Wonderful.